


Is that a trust fund in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [4]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, M/M, Multi, Stockmarket AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-22
Updated: 2008-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:59:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'He's a Bunansa. You're a Shinra. Tell me how this will go well, Rufus.'</p><p>Tseng's in New York, Balthier's in London, and Rufus is in the sky as the world burns around them. Hedging on futures can be such tricky things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Is that a trust fund in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

**Author's Note:**

> The one that started it all.

_Early October, 2008_

It takes the entire financial system crashing for Tseng to be found out: the circumstances, as people would say, were extenuating. Tseng hadn't so much slept in the last two weeks as he had napped in between one market opening and another closing. There was a list on his desk that served as a body count for the days: AIG, Merrill Lynch, the Lehmann Brothers, Wachovia, Iceland. That day, he went from the floor to his office to the elevators without remembering the ring still sitting warm in his breast pocket. Principles were funny things; he couldn't talk to Balthier with it on, and he'd never visit Rufus without it.

Tseng knows the moment he walks in through the anteroom and in through to Rufus' office at one in the morning, almost haggard and fresh off the phone from someone somewhere in panicked Asia.

'Lose something?' Rufus asks, which makes Tseng pause, and then there isn’t a point in playing any games. He unbuttons his jacket, takes out the ring and slips it onto his fourth finger.

'If you don't like it, you don't have to,' Rufus points out, flat in the way he was when the world didn't bend to his will; the world hasn't been a very willing partner lately. It makes Tseng want to hesitate again, and Tseng rarely hesitates. He has bad timing, yes. But it has been a bad week.

'It has very little to do with liking, Rufus,' Tseng says, very calmly, from four feet away. 'I want to.'

'In my presence,' Rufus says, making no move to close the gap.

'In your presence,' Tseng agrees, tucking his hands into his pockets. 'And out of it.'

'Here comes the qualifier,' Rufus pronounces, ironic. At least he's willing to listen, or maybe he's just tired out from the last twenty days and twenty nights of phone calls and meetings and red figures going redder. Tseng supposes he should be glad he's even being given room to explain, justify and propose an alternative route other than his immediate retrenchment and the wrath of one of the richest men in the world brought down on his head.

Tseng's lips quirk. Laughter under fire. 'Men need equals, Rufus,' he starts.

-

 _Before_

It'd started the way things normally started, nothing of the starshine that characterised relationships with Shinra, both the one Tseng had professionally and the one... otherwise. No, nothing spectacular: no sponsorships, no courtships, no fine wine. A staid lunch at a staid hotel with a boring speaker and an interesting conversationalist at the table.

Afterwards they talked. After that they fucked. After that Balthier rolled Tseng over and said, 'Do you have any idea at all who I am?'

To which Tseng responded, stretching slightly, 'Yes.'

There was this silence, filled mostly be Balthier's incredulity, and then by a warm kind of palpable amusement. 'And do you care at all?' asked the Bunansa heir, who, if he so wanted to, could affect the lives of a good few thousand people at his whim.

'Not precisely,' Tseng said. He sat up and pushed his hair out of the way; Balthier’s fingers crept forward to assist, caressing. Tseng turned and spared Balthier a look. 'Would you rather I fawned?' asked Tseng before he swung his legs off and padded, unselfconscious and completely bare, towards the bathroom.

'No,' Balthier replied, getting up and following after. 'I just find it -'

'Interesting?' Tseng turned on the shower and tested the water. The heat was instant. Balthier always had the best choice in hotels. 'Unbelievable, refreshing, something more than the boring debutants in dresses and the heirs in suits?'

'Most people are either a little bit apprehensive, or far too enthusiastic,' Balthier explained, crowding Tseng into the glass stall. 'I'll do your back?'

Tseng laughed, a short, sharp noise, and reached around Balthier’s pale shoulders for the shampoo. 'I'll do it myself. I prefer the men I fuck to at least know my name before they get any ideas.'

'Ah,' Balthier said, sheepish.

'It's Tseng,' Tseng replied, scrubbing at his hair. 'Just Tseng. Keep your hands to yourself,' he added, when Balthier's fingers found the insides of his hips. 'I've a meeting in half an hour.'

'You don't speak like you're really from Manhattan,' Balthier observed, leaving his hands precisely where they were.

It earned him another arch of Tseng's eyebrow. 'What does anyone from Manhattan sound like? No one's really from Manhattan, Bunansa.'

'Call me Balthier.'

'Balthier,' Tseng said, his tonality heavy on the vowels, and then he flipped the water on to cold.

'You're a cruel man,' Balthier informed Tseng as they dressed. Tseng's reply was a non-committal noise. Tseng's shirt was another matter altogether. It caught Balthier's attention far more readily for how it was, for one, something worth less than a hundred dollars. 'You're from Shinra, aren't you?' He handed Tseng his jacket and noted, again, the quality and cut as both competant and particularly generic. 'And they dress you in that?'

'I dress myself,' Tseng said, mildly. He shot Balthier a glance as he flipped up his collar and reached for his tie. 'You'll excuse me if I prefer not to waste the wealth of small nations on my wardrobe.'

'But a man's clothes say so much about him,' Balthier sighed.

'Yes,' Tseng nodded, finishing off his knot. 'They do, don't they?' If there was irony in his voice, he didn't let it show. Not in so many words. Finished, Tseng leaned against the wall and watched Balthier. 'You are a rich man. You should know. Yours is the breed that invented multiple ways of tying a noose.' He threw Balthier's tie at the man. 'Poor men like myself would rather it just over and done with. I'll be going.'

'Hey,' Balthier called out. He was still halfway through his cuffs by the time Tseng was at his hotel door. 'Leave me your number, at least.'

That was a smile on Tseng's face, he supposed, but Tseng threw it so swiftly over his shoulder Balthier wasn’t sure. 'It's in your phone already. Under my name, which you should hopefully remember. I took the liberty of taking yours at the same time.'

Balthier lets his hands drop. 'Do you do anything straightforward?'

'I was taught to be suspicious of expensive men,' was all Tseng said before he closed the door behind him.

-

It was an on-again, off-again, as-and-when kind of thing. Tseng never said a word about where it was going, and for a very long time he didn't think Balthier the sort who cared. Tseng was in New York, Balthier in London: they met, at best, three times every quarter, and were mostly too tired to care much for conversation any of the times they did meet. Their conversation they saved for long-distance phone calls, usually filled with mockery. There were not many people alive that Tseng could talk to the way he talked to Balthier.

Tseng would be over in the NYSE, standing in his office or somewhere overlooking the floor, while down in the bullpit his men climbed over people and frothed at the mouth every time the market was shorted or some people ran on the banks.

Thousands of miles away, Balthier would take one good look at the FTSE, and pick up the phone.

Tseng’s phone would sound. The ring went into his pocket.

'Are you an optimist?' Balthier would say into the receiver when Tseng picked up.

'No,' Tseng would reply. He wasn’t.

'Or a betting man?' Balthier would ask.

'Maybe,' Tseng would reply. He was, in some senses, betting his livelihood on a President who couldn't find his arse with a torchlight and candidates who were too busy ripping out each other's throats to approve bailouts which might just have saved the rest of the world from the next Great Depression. He might just have been a betting man, yes.

'Ah,' Balthier would nod. 'Want to make a wager? Say, for every 100 drop on your end, mine'll follow.'

'What are the stakes?'

'What are you wearing?'

-

Tseng would send Balthier Hawaiian print t-shirts for Christmas. (Even if he'd never give Rufus a gift in his life.) Balthier would respond more subtly: for some reason whenever Tseng stayed the night in Balthier's (and it truly was one) castle, he could never find his suit the morning after. The house staff moved around his queries, spouting gleeful Spanish; laid out, ever and always, was a fresh Hawaiian shirt. If there were pants, Tseng learned to consider himself lucky.

When Balthier’s contrary grain had him disdain all that his money could buy, he stayed in Tseng's apartment. He usually ended up on the couch regardless of the extent of his efforts prior to his exhaustion. Tseng was not known for his sympathy. Whenever Balthier complained of backaches and cramps, Tseng’s response was invariably, 'Does my poverty offend you?'

(Rufus never stayed the night, nor did Tseng ever ask him to.)

There was getting used to the time difference, which Balthier shook off with couple of draughts from the obnoxiously abudant fountain of New York youth. There was also getting used to Tseng, which was another thing altogether. It did not matter at all how long Balthier knew him (long), or how well Balthier knew him (well), there were some things that Balthier simply didn't adapt to naturally. Tseng's washing machine, for example, and the fact that it didn't come with anyone to press the buttons for you. The fact that the man ate like a bird, if he ever ate at all, and slept like a vampire, if he even slept. It put Balthier off, made him want to run his fingers over everything to find the places where his nails'd catch in the cracks.

Balthier remembers, with some clarity and chagrin, after the first time he experimented Tseng made him wash the sheets.

-

Tseng never cracked, not easily. Not even when it was Sunday in New York but Monday in the east, and not even when he was on the phone at two in the morning with his voice drowsy but sharp, and not even when Balthier rolled over and onto him. The most reaction he ever got was a raised eyebrow. A little sign: I know what you're doing. He couldn't make Tseng's breath catch, though it wasn't for lack of trying.

There were certain things about Balthier that set Tseng on edge. Or closer to the edge. Tseng was all edges; he suspected a word didn't exist for what Balthier made of him except _Tseng_.

Balthier would have a limo waiting at the airport every time he arrived; the limo'd be quite awkward in the very narrow streets fourteen floors below Tseng's apartment where it delivered Balthier to Tseng's lobby door. Balthier would bring supplies: food that shouldn't have been called food with the processing it'd gone through, bread that shouldn't have been edible with the lack of processing it'd gone through, coffee of a quality that probably crippled a country to produce, and for that coffee - endless and startling bottles of mineral water. After the first time (and Tseng remembered how easily, blithely and amazingly Balthier had placated the prostitute downstairs after the washing machine'd flooded her apartment), Balthier brought sheets. Lots of them. Brand new ones. Tseng was sure the threadcount was a manufactured impossibility, but if Balthier knew anything it was of manufacturing, money or impossibilities.

Tseng knew what it was about him that made him an object of fascination for those rich men's sons. In a skyscraper high enough that Tseng could see the true edge of the city, veiled in a velvet night and the starlight of a true impossibility, Rufus once told him what it was.

Tseng was careful. He never let Balthier see the ring.

-

Rich boys, Tseng was wont to think to himself: they never grow past their fathers.

-

Tseng kept the ringtone on his second mobile phone very quiet. When it rang, it never woke Balthier from his stretched sleep, awkward, naked, and entirely too long-legged for Tseng's couch.

Tseng was very careful. He never let Rufus see Balthier.

-

 _Early October, 2008_

Rufus is unimpressed when Tseng finishes. It’s in the defensiveness, the flatness, the old signs that dated back to when his empire'd been small, and when the two of them had been even smaller men themselves. Tseng shifts his feet. The action supposedly shows some penitence.

'So he's your equal?' Rufus says at last, all golden and bright and untouchable and less afraid than Balthier ever was or would be. 'What does that make me? The other woman?'

That makes Tseng laugh, honest and loud and long. 'I think you lack several of the definitive features, Rufus,' he says, which earns him a look. 'No, you're not the other woman. Neither are you an equal. You're Rufus Shinra. I follow in your wake; sometimes that means I need something more base. Men need equals. You are more than me, Rufus Shinra.'

'Sometimes I doubt that,' Rufus says with all the years he doesn’t have on Tseng. 'The way I lose you so easily makes me doubt even more.'

Tseng cocks his head at that. 'You also lost another four million on the market this afternoon,' he feels justified in pointing out.

'Is that meant to be salt on the wound?'

'What are you going to do about it if it is?' Tseng says, quietly, stepping forward one, two, three feet. 'Be passive, the way you used to be? No.' He rests his hand on Rufus' shoulder, because ever since his father died Rufus never wore a tie. 'Go out,' Tseng says into Rufus' ear. 'You told me once you liked me for a lack of fear.'

Rufus turns his head to catch Tseng's eye. 'The poor man and the rich boy. We've both heard this story before.'

'Mm,' Tseng agrees, his fingers finding a rhythm on Rufus' shoulder. 'Rich boys coming into money. The people you mix with, eager to love you and slow to abandon you because they are afraid of losing the things they never earned themselves. You are right. I'm not afraid of the same things you are afraid of. I earned everything I have.' Tseng pulls Rufus closer. 'And if I lose it,' he says. 'I’ll earn it back again.'

Rufus looks at him for a long while before he reaches up. He traces the rim of Tseng's ring with his fingernail. 'Who is he?'

'If I tell you, you'll have something done.’

'Who is he?' Rufus asks, again.

Tseng sighs. 'Monogamy is a relatively new concept, Rufus; it's fidelity you should be concerned with. In that respect you have nothing to fear from me.'

'Who,' Rufus asks, a third time, 'is he?'

'You'll wage war,' Tseng warns, as they both began to back up towards Rufus' desk.

'Knowing you,' Rufus says, eyes deepening to black, 'you'll have picked someone who'd enjoy the act. What's his name?'

'You men of empire,' Tseng grunts when his back hits the wooden edge of the desk. 'He's a Bunansa. You're a Shinra. Tell me how this will go well, Rufus.'

'You tell me,' Rufus replies, reaching for Tseng's tie. Rich men and their nooses. 'You're the one who started this.'


	2. Some things you can't buy, for everything else there's the theoretical joint Bunansa-Shinra empire.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tseng doesn't play games. But he does play. And well.

_Early October, 2008_

Tseng doesn't make mistakes.

He knows the ring is in his pocket. He remembers putting it there. He remembers very carefully not removing his jacket when they got in at 4am, because he was laughing too hard at Balthier trying to frantically untie the chaos that some preppie child at the bar made of his ridiculously (artfully, Balthier insisted) tasselled belt. Tseng distinctly remembers hanging up his jacket and smoothing the lapels, because he smirked at the sound of Balthier's impossibly long piss while he did so. That jacket was in exactly the same spot this morning, the same hanger. Tseng did not check when he put the jacket on, ready for work, because he knew the ring was in his pocket.

The ring isn't in his pocket.

Tseng wonders if Balthier slept at all. The man is not an early riser, typically. If anything can be called typical about him.

Balthier sets the ring on the cheap scarred plastic that Tseng calls his dining room table despite the fact that there is no dining room and almost no table. Balthier clicks his fingers around the metal. The ring whirls, almost motionless but for the spin. They both watch it. The slowing oscillations introduce a wobble to the motion. The ring hits the side of Balthier's empty espresso cup, rebounds to sound off the side of Tseng's fresh-poured mug, and careens closer to the edge. Balthier doesn't move. Tseng does not twitch.

The ring falls. Whip-quick, Balthier catches it before it hits the floor and slams it back onto the plastic.

"I logged in just then. Good move last night." It's never an effort for Tseng to keep his tone mild. "A tolerable move on your part. Up 15 points, and rising."

Balthier shrugs. He spins the ring again.

"I know you did something illegal. I know what. When is what I'm wondering."

Balthier smiles, crookedly. Tseng has never heard the man stay silent for so long while conscious. Tseng can play this game all day. Tseng invented this game.

"I don't mean that school-aged thing from the other day."

"You can't talk to me about illegality." Balthier slams the ring as flat as his tone. He flicks it across the table; it pings off his fingernail. Tseng catches it with as minimal a motion as he can, and sits down. He puts down his bowl of cereal. Under the table, his knees are against Balthier's. "I thought this sort of thing was illegal in your country."

Tseng puts in the ring back in his pocket. He feels the lining there, just to make sure. He doesn't make mistakes. The lining is whole. "What sort of thing?"

Balthier gestures vaguely. There is a strange sort of anger in the motion. "This sort of – thing –"

"This," Tseng says, and pats his pocket. "Is not a thing."

Balthier doesn't move. "I'm going back to my hotel."

-

 _Before_

Tseng's in Barcelona when he gets the call. He looks at the name, looks at Rufus asleep on the bed and contemplates not answering his phone. Rufus is a one-city kind of man, and has always been; his jetlag, Tseng thinks, is more melodrama than anything else.

Tseng shuts the bedroom door, moves out into the hall and is halfway to the lifts before he answers.

"You know there's a real Picasso hanging in my bathroom?"

"What level are you on?"

"Eight," Balthier says. "Did you notice yours? I bet you've got a Cezanne."

"I noticed there was free shampoo," Tseng says.

There's a faint sound of music. Balthier notices it but doesn't recognise what it means. He's too busy wincing: he's not sure what's more embarrassing, Tseng's pragmatism or his undeniable and inexplicable love of his hair.

"You have such an eye for detail. If you're not going to check I'm coming down to your room to have a look. If your bathroom's bigger than mine there will be hell to pay. Maybe you have a Matisse."

"Already in the lift," Tseng says. "Stay where you are."

Balthier feels an undeniable warmth start to build. Tseng is blunt at times. Oh, Tseng is blunt in decidedly blissful ways.

"Room eight--"

"—oh one four," Tseng finishes. His breath is fast. Balthier likes to think it's not entirely due to his rapid pace. "I know."

"Are you spying on me for your boss?"

"No. Someone's left their knickers hanging on your door knob."

"Mmm," Balthier says. From the bed, he hears the latch click. "Bring them in, will you? There's usually a number or business card—"

Balthier stops when black silk flies over his shoulder, and closes his phone with a snap.

-

Tseng pulls the door shut behind him as silently as possible. His caution is, for once, unnecessary. Rufus stirs on the sofa. He peers at Tseng from under the forearm covering his eyes.

"Did you notice the Cezanne in the bathroom?"

I was just getting a drink: the words are already on his lips and the two vodka-and-sodas in his hands. Tseng hesitates.

"Yes," Tseng says, "I did."

Rufus gives him a long look. Tseng refuses to explain his still-wet hair. Men have showers, after all. The conference is for a week. He's going to have to find a better way to do this. Or, not to do this at all. There's only so much credit that he can go on from Rufus and him still being physically unfamiliar with each other after years spent crossing domestic phone lines from New York to Chicago.

Rufus pulls a pillow over his face this time. "Before or after you stole all the shampoo?"

-

Tseng does not have anything against monogamy.

The problem, if he were Rufus and thought of things like these as problems, is that he doesn't have anything against a lack thereof of monogamy, either. To condone one thing or to condemn its opposite - both eventually give rise to the same thing. Tseng doesn't subscribe, he simply -- lives.

He's never lived quite so close to the line. Some part of him feels something that any other man would name guilt, but his involvement with Rufus precludes all regrets. They're different men. He's told himself this from day one.

So Tseng doesn't touch Rufus, or smile, or do any of the things that guilty men do. He does not brush his hands over Rufus' flight-and-sleep mussed hair, not in any way that could be called either proprietary or paranoid.

He's simply glad for his foresight, and slightly dissatisfied with the way he had to flush half the contents of the small bottles of shampoo and soap down the toilet in the light of his precaution.

-

(Tseng regards habit as that fragile line bordering meticulousness and madness. Nevertheless, all men fall into some kind of habit. Connections and familiarity, skills and knowledge: the ways and means through which they know who they are. On working trips, Tseng's habit is Balthier.)

-

Tseng never buys gifts for Rufus. The act would be regarded with intense suspicion, especially as they are here, so to speak, for work.

Tseng checks Rufus' toiletries to confirm his usual brand before Tseng makes his way to the giftshop. He pays with cash. He walks the eight flights of stairs rather than catching the lift and doesn't think of it as penance, not in the slightest. It surprises him that he's timed it right considering Balthier's non-standard sleeping hours: the man answers the door with wet hair, too much jewellery and a towel around his waist.

"A gift," Tseng says, and offers.

Balthier's eyebrow quirks.

"'...a fragrance that reminds me of an Italian spring morning, of mountain daffodils and orange blossoms after the rain.'"

"Balthier," Tseng says, "it's cologne. It doesn't require poetry. Simply, wear it."

"Thank you, I suppose, though I don't usually opt for the citruses. I'll try it out." Balthier won't let him in. His trailing leg hooks the door so it's mostly closed behind him. He makes quite a show of unboxing, opening, sniffing, applying. Tseng can hear a voice. Voices. A very heavy Spanish accent. "Such classy taste, Tseng, you surprise me. Though I suppose you're not the kind who wants to smell like a two dollar Bangkok whore just rolled you in an alley." Balthier's grin is entirely too knowing; he doesn't ask. The question would be the crassest kind of hypocrisy. Tseng feels unusually grateful. "I'll see you downstairs."

At least, Tseng thinks, this means he won't have to have four showers a day.

Tseng always notices details. The ones that matter.

-

 _Mid October 2008_

It would take a special kind of man to outdo Rufus Shinra on his home-ground.

Tseng watches Balthier walk up the graceful flight of stairs. The day's paramount supermodel graces his right arm while (Tseng sighs) heavily muscular Nordic twins hover at his left. Tseng wonders why he hoped, for a moment, that Balthier might've been the man to do it. War does require a definite first strike. That stunning female, those muscular accessories, they might be a weapon against another man. Not Rufus. Balthier's not even firing near the target.

It never really occurs to Tseng that Balthier's not trying to strike at Rufus.

Balthier glides across the carpet, ignoring the rest of the crowd. Tseng spares a glance for the model. The twins have to share another glance between them; Tseng sees no point in bothering with more than one look.

"Couldn't find yourself triplets?"

Balthier grins. His eyes are sparkling. He has dressed impeccably. He fits the setting as though Rufus's party club were made for him. The playboy. The playboy bunny. The fuckbuddies. Tseng feels something – not quite, but vaguely like disappointment. Balthier only ever rises to the occasion, and never beyond.

"Not at such short notice. Triplets seem a rare commodity out in this current market. In the spirit of this current celebration, think your boss feels a little like trading?"

Tseng raises an eyebrow. "Flesh trading was outlawed in the US a long time ago, Balthier. There was a big war. You might have read about it over on your little island."

"Flesh was not what I had in mind," Balthier says. "Allow me to introduce you to the Ronsenburgs, of –"

Of course. Tseng bites back a smile. Perhaps Balthier does rise, on occasion. "I am well aware of who they are. I understand the DAX is holding itself steady, gentlemen?"

"Er hat prächtiges haar, Balthier." The first half, vaguely amused despite the wicked scar.

"Aber es ist ziemlich dekadent," said the second, parochial. "Fraulich und dekadent."

"Bitte, play nicely, boys." Balthier makes a face. "You do know Fran." Balthier makes no move to present the woman. "Every man with a twitch of life left in his balls knows Fran."

"Charming," Tseng says, calmly. "And what is your subversive motivation here tonight, Fran? Are you also some renegade Russian heiress here to play the game while the stakes are so high?"

Fran almost smiles. "Heiress, no. I'm here to keep Balthier's arm warm."

"Fran doesn't play." Balthier's eyebrow quirks. "Fran likes to watch, though."

"You boys," her long-nailed hand moves, vague. Diamonds have been set in the polish. They catch the shifting light and sparkle. "Such whole-hearted devotion to lights on a board."

"That," Balthier says to her, Tseng and the rest of the world, "is why the game is so much fun. Most of the players just don't realise that particular fact."

Tseng waits, just in case the performance hasn't quite finished. Balthier grins as though he knows what Tseng's thinking. It's a half-decent show, Tseng thinks. Balthier has Europe on his side.

"Lead on," Balthier says. "I understand Shinra's waiting."

Tseng does, and thinks he might not regret this.

-

 _Earlier_

"Which one," Rufus asks. It is not a question.

Tseng detests biting; his nails, his hair, his lip. He clenches his teeth instead, and does not grind.

"Which one."

"Use your head," Tseng says. He waits that he can speak without gasping.

"Not the father." Rufus grunts, almost a laugh. "You did say 'equal,' though I doubt you understand how you belittle yourself with that comment."

There is a compliment there, somewhere. Tseng is hungry for air. He can't risk opening his lips. "Cid Bunansa killed himself, Rufus. Remember?"

"…and the older sons are both imprisoned. Fraud, or something equally shameful. Not them. There's fifteen cousins scattered about Europe engaged in various endeavour. Industry and manufacturing, mostly; torsion field inventors and energy efficiency engineers. Well away from the weapons manufacture of the father. The daughters are all staid, spinster'd and bound in not-for-profit charity, as though they can compensate for their brothers' rampant lifestyles."

"Academia," Tseng wheezes. His fingers tighten in the sheets. His knuckles are white. The muscles in his arms spasm. "They're at Oxford. Not –" Tseng waits until the feeling subsides, but it does not. He groans. "Charity."

"As I said," Rufus hums, "not-for-profit charity works of the likes only the truly rich can pursue. There's only one left. I'm not impressed, but of the lot he is the best. He very nearly did it all on his own. I never expected you could be so attracted to the rebellious type. You're so – conformist. Shall I wear leather and makeup, and grow my hair long? Will that do it for you?"

Tseng says nothing. Whiteness builds behind his eyes. He reaches for it. Rufus's fingers alight on the nape of his neck and stroke him closer.

"Bring Balthier on Friday night," Rufus whispers.

Tseng comes so hard he shakes.

-

 _Mid October 2008_

"I didn't make the world, Rufus." Balthier grins over the rim of his whiskey. "I merely try to live in it."

"In only the best parts." Rufus sits on the sofa with his legs apart. Tseng mentally measures the distance between his knees.

Balthier shrugs and settles back into the sofa. "I have the means. A fruitless kind of denial to wander the world slumming it." Balthier's eyes flick to Tseng as he uncrosses his legs. Balthier's smile is sublime: he slides his knees apart. Mimicry in this case is not a form of flattery. "At least, all the time. A man likes a little decadence."

"Or a lot," Rufus says, "or so I hear."

"I wouldn't believe everything you hear. Especially considering where some people's mouths have been."

Tseng clears his throat. "Just so you know, Rufus's cock is bigger."

Balthier chokes on his mouthful. Rufus starts, his eyes suddenly wide.

"Don't look at me like that." Tseng shrugs. "It's easier to say it now than sit through fifty rounds of pretention before the pair of you come to the same conclusion. You could both whip them out and see, if you prefer."

"I think," Rufus drawls, "I shall trust your judgment on this particular point."

Balthier laughs. "Such flattery. With a trust fund as large as yours," he smirks, "almost, I do know that trusting a man is a greater compliment than loving him."

Of the three of them, Tseng is unsure who is the more startled when Rufus actually growls

-

 _I didn't make the world,_ Balthier says, _I only try to live in it._

It's true, Tseng thinks. People like Balthier detest the world, laugh at it, learn to manipulate it, slide under the world's skin and make it twitch. People like Rufus try to make their own world. Tseng is unsure which is the more desperate reaction, which is the braver, which is the more realistic.

When it comes down to it, Tseng doesn't think either of them deserve his admiration. His respect is another matter entirely.

-

"Come on," Balthier says, "come on, man; you spent your youth being carried about a football field in the arms of cheerleaders. Your father built you an ethical company to which you were the sole and rightful heir. You got to learn at his knee exactly how things worked. What I was doing? I was studying. I had glasses that would have made you laugh. In fact, backed up by your great cheerleading squad, you probably would have punched me in the face. I've seen your American movies, I know the way you think this should pan out. I was studying, and working my arse off while I was doing it. A third son. Do you know what that means, in London? That means priesthood or poverty. Or some wall-eyed cow with a half-rotted castle, and I would have spent my days shooting some poor long-eared furry things and exclaiming over the woodiness of words. In London, a man is born to an existence already mapped. Do you know I can speak Latin? What the fuck was my father thinking, seriously, when he sent me away for five years to learn to speak Latin! In this day and age! Well, fuck him, of course I ran off. I paid my way, engineering, aeronautics, communications, anything but what he wanted me to do. In America – you have freedom but only if you fight for it. I had to run. There's no fighting back over there. You have the freedom to fight for for freedom's sake. The best kind of freedom or the worst? It's freedom to prove yourself, regardless. Or freedom to be nothing, if that's what you want to be. It's just that that's what most people want to be. Nothing."

Rufus is dry. "Freedom to fuck anyone you want?"

Balthier stares at his own index finger as though unaware he had been gesturing. "Fuck, I'm bloody drunk."

"Just so you know," Rufus says, "I was never carried in the arms of cheerleaders, and Shinra Electric was never terribly ethical."

Balthier laughs. "My man, at least your family didn't make all their wealth off weapons manufacture."

"Oh," Rufus says, "they did. In a very intensive way."

"—must you trump me on every point I gain?"

Rufus contemplates that seriously for a moment, and says: "Yes."

-

 _Before_

Rufus likes things done on his own terms - Rufus gets things done on his own terms. His existence is the augmentation of the kind of immortality people read of in legend: stubbornness, genius, affluence and the absolute resistance to anything that resists him. Fortune has gifted him with the necessary weapons to wage his war against fate. A silver tongue. A golden, dirty halo. A father who won't fucking die.

'A poster boy,' Rufus snarls, eleven in the evening on a drizzly evening. The entire world is dark around him, sinister in the way that only a city pretending to be benevolent can be. New York opens her arms to you, sir, and swallows you whole. 'That's all he wants of me, all he makes of me; he thinks that I'm too stupid to see exactly what kind of a road we'll be going down if he persists in dragging Shinra into ammunitions.'

Tseng leans forward, elbows on his knees. 'If you'd rather your family not maintain its standard of living, Rufus, by all means.'

They're on a park bench. The back of Tseng's pants are filthy with dirty water. Rufus' suit is charcoal grey, the farthest thing from his preferred whites and open collars. Shinra's tie is somewhere else, probably being run over by taxis and stepped on by jaded pedestrians. Rufus goes through them at the rate most people go through tissue paper.

'I want sustainability,' Rufus snarls, 'not stupid aggregation. I want to earn money and be able to spend it instead of wasting all my fucking time making up paperwork to blindside the authorities. If the world's going to dangle by Shinra's fingertips, it's not going to be because we're the ones pointing goddamned guns at them. Christ. By the time he dies, I'll be inheriting a festering law suit.'

'Strong words,' Tseng says.

'I'm going to take this from him, Tseng.' Rufus stares out across the grime of the feet of Manhattan's skyscrapers. 'All of it.'

'By all means,' Tseng agrees. Rufus looks back over his shoulder in askance. Tseng raises his shoulders a half-inch. 'I say all that I need to, Rufus.'

Rufus' shark smile is bright even in the darkness. He sits back hard against the bench. 'You know,' he confesses. 'Once I thought that I was doing this -' he gestures at Tseng '- simply to piss him off.'

Tseng crosses his legs and waits, patient.

'He loathes everything you are. It's half the reason why he doesn't even notice you most of the time.'

'I could number the reasons,' Tseng agrees. 'I'm poor. Of no particular heritage. Foreign. I look like I'm better suited to selling bagels on a corner near the Chrysler Building. I doubt Shinra likes remembering his roots.'

Rufus makes a pleased noise. 'He's only a generation away from what we once were. He's terrified of the idea of being what his father was. He's got no head for studying, he's a manager. Just a good chess player. If he hadn't had Shinra handed to him on a silver platter, he'd be nothing. He knows it. Sees it every time you turn up in the boardroom.'

'Is that why you persist in sending me up into meetings where I don't belong?' Tseng inquires, pointedly.

'I don't fuck you because it pisses off my father, not anymore,' Rufus says. Then he pauses. 'But it doesn't mean I don't enjoy pissing him off as and when I can.'

'Thank you,' Tseng says, dry.

Rufus' shoulder brushes his when he sits back again. Rufus keeps moving, agitated and alive. Tseng is steady in his waiting. Rufus settles, slowly. 'You know what I mean,' the heir says at last.

Tseng uncurls his arm around the back of the bench. He pushes the hair at the nape of Rufus' neck aside, and presses his fingers downwards against the tenseness of Rufus' muscles. 'You had some growing up to do, back then.'

Rufus barks out a laugh. 'You're the only one who dared. You're still the only one who dares. At first I thought you were just a good -- good example of who I could end up being if I wasn't good enough to --' He grits his teeth against the noise that builds at the back of his throat when Tseng's fingers knead down hard.

Rufus feels his fire and cold go down his spine. 'I thought I could push everything you represented out of my nightmares by getting close to you. Purge the fear that my father has for what you are -'

'Fuck it out of your system?' Tseng asks calmly, fingers making Rufus want to shift and move and do entirely inappropriate things.

'Something like that,' Rufus agrees. 'But you turned out to be more than that.'

'And you turned out to be more than a spoiled child,' Tseng says, shoving his thumb against the top nub of Rufus' spine.

'You can talk,' Rufus gasps out, finally leaning away and pushing Tseng's hand off. 'Keep doing that and you'll cause an incident.'

Tseng's lips twist. 'You're not any more known for your self control than I'm known for eloquence, Rufus.'

Rufus stands. 'You can talk, Tseng. The rest of the world's just too ignorant to listen.'

Tseng enjoys the fact that Rufus still hasn't learned to give a straight compliment to save his life. He stands, following as he always does. They're silent on their walk to Tseng's apartment. Rufus won't stay, afterwards. Rufus can't.

Tseng lets Rufus crawl over him for the most part of the night, touching and conquering territory in practice-wars against imaginary foes. He pushes rough material off Tseng's back and forces Tseng to touch silk and expensive weave. Rufus is pushing up against his fingers, sweaty and angry and young, when he says to Tseng, 'I'm -- getting exiled.'

Tseng pushes him down onto the bed hard enough that Rufus grunts. 'He's sending me off to Chicago. Half of it's the office there, the other half is business school, but it's all just to get me off his back, fuck, Tseng, don't just stop now, it's not something we haven't anticipated -- We've just been waiting for the when and the where and you can't be annoyed at me for it -- it's not even --'

Tseng's fingers bite into Rufus' shoulder. 'I know.' He's known. He leans in, fucks Rufus in short, hard movements, and presses close to say, 'Do you want to try something?'

'Try what?' Rufus snaps, hands fisting in Tseng's hair and pulling, so pushy even when he's being screwed over.

'Something that might just drive your father that much crazier,' Tseng says.

He doesn't send Rufus off at the airport - he has no real reason to - but Rufus flies with a ring on his finger and no explanation given to his father for it at all.

-

'You live like a Spartan,' Balthier tells Tseng the second time they meet. Tseng knows that this is an entirely misappropriated assertion: Balthier has never seen his apartment. All Balthier knows is that Tseng dislikes the hotels Shinra puts him in, dislikes the women almost as much as he dislikes the men, dislikes the ballrooms, dislikes the dinners, dislikes the speechmakers, dislikes the politics. They're still strangers. 'It won't kill you to have more than two expressions, you know. Man can only get so far on "content" and "displeased".'

'Occasionally I manage exasperated,' Tseng points out. They're in Germany this time around; the Bunansa business being highly invested in the region, Balthier is here personally. Frankfurt is like any other city; inferior to New York and brighter than London. Balthier's found it hard to find time to talk to Tseng, and has found it even harder to find Tseng at all.

The Brit crosses his arms over his chest. It's Sunday: he has earrings worn lower than the ones he keeps for formal events, and enough rings on his fingers that Tseng is privately impressed at the dexterity they still keep. Balthier frowns. 'Do you know who I had to bribe to tell me where you were? Do you ever pick up your phone?'

Tseng makes a short motion at his mobile, which is propped up on one corner of the treadmill's console showing a list of missed calls. Balthier's name is there in red. 'I don't deal with Shinra's German investments,' he says in between paces. 'Any calls from you would've been social.'

'I could've been in trouble,' Balthier says.

Tseng shoots him a look.

'Or perhaps I just wanted to talk to you.' Balthier smiles, settling in now that his prey is cornered. 'Desperately.'

'If you do wanted anything with that mouth of yours,' Tseng laughs, 'I doubt it was talking.' He doesn't break his run as he speaks. When Balthier glances at the meter it reads 10 kilometres, the numbers slowly ticking higher. Tseng's shirt is soaked through. It's - 'Eyes up, Bunansa.'

Obediently, Balthier looks up. He would've, in any case. Tseng's body makes him feel outclassed. 'Will you be done with your exaggerated torture session any time soon?'

'I'm on my last rep,' Tseng acknowledges, legs pumping.

'Good,' Balthier says. 'Let me take you out today. I know Frankfurt well; I think I see this bloody city more often than I see London some days. We could --'

The hum of the treadmill dies down, and Tseng comes off of it with a towel in hand. The look he shoots Balthier is knowing. 'Save your dreams, Balthier,' he says as he dries off. 'If you want to bribe me, you're better off doing it straightforward and with less filigree.'

'Do you accept cash?' Balthier inquires. "Or card?"

'I'm,' Tseng smiles a smile that Balthier doesn't understand, 'paid better than anything you could offer.'

'One of Shinra's boys,' Balthier sighs. 'The things that man does with his money are obscene.'

'Mmm,' Tseng nods, heading for the showers and trying very hard not to laugh.

It doesn't deter Balthier. 'How about something less liquid, then?' He makes an expressive motion with his hands. 'There's probably a couple of yachts the old man won't notice going missing.'

'You've a lot to learn,' Tseng murmurs, rolling his shirt up over his head once they enter the locker room. Balthier seems unperturbed by the public nature of his flirting. Tseng's equally placid about a man watching him change. 'I appreciate honesty,' he says, turning to Balthier. 'Not money or equivalent assets. Your family business is well known for its military affiliations. Shinra doesn't like its employees smelling of gunpowder.'

Balthier steps in close enough that he can smell Tseng's sweat. His earrings brush the upper arch of Tseng's shoulders when he leans in to say, 'All right. I propose that we go upstairs and have a good screw for mutual benefit. Gainful trade.'

Tseng tilts his head, silent.

Balthier shifts. 'Please?' he offers.

'Good boy,' Tseng says with a smile, and throws his shirt at the other man as he walks into the shower, shutting - and locking - the door behind him.

'I'm not your bell hop!' Balthier calls out. The sound of water running is all he gets in response. He drops the dirty shirt onto a bench and sighs. 'At least tell me your room number. I'm not going to wait here until you're done. Have a sense of charity, man. Tseng. Tseng.'

-

Balthier started to smoke for something to do while standing around in clubs. He couldn't dance beyond the bit of ballroom necessary to keep up old English traditions of gentlemanly behaviour. He smoked because he never knew what to do with his hands while standing around looking elegant, posing for the local paparazzi. Plus, Europe was fucking cold and London miserable on top of that. He gave up once, cold-turkey, mostly because Tseng told him he couldn't do it. Six months he went without. He found he had no urges, no need to smoke, no desire. Whatever drove Balthier to his vices, it wasn't any unthinking addiction.

(So why smoke, then? Balthier has to laugh, has to make himself laugh. Because I want to, he replies. Balthier never likes to think about his choices. Everything is just three swift steps away from a suicidal fall.)

Descended from an unfortunately long line of lords and thieves (one and the same, Balthier knows intimately) he played tennis with the young royals and escorted Danish royalty through the mind-numbing pitfall that was the grand game of cricket. Balthier was unaccountably good at games that put a big stick between himself and the ball; more British tradition, there.

Balthier liked to keep his distance even when making connections. The game was just that for him. A game. Winning was better than losing, of course, but losing was nothing to cut himself up over. Balthier learned how to win, mostly, without running up much of a sweat.

(And much later, when Rufus strokes Balthier's sweat-drenched flank hard enough to leave five vivid red marks, Balthier laughs again.)

-

Rufus learned to play golf with the nouveau-riche; the royalty of the American Free World who spoke crap English and who went to Ivy League schools on daddy's money. The idea that they were all grafted from the same tree made his skin itch with a kind of fever that only twelve productive hours in cold glass offices could burn off. Rufus usually waved them off after 18 holes before heading to the garage and beating the windshield of his car in with a 9 iron.

The rest of his life suited him better. A childhood filled with everything and nothing; white walls and a wish that he didn't desire or understand his father's company as well as he did. Twelve years old and the idea of money and its liquid state amazed Rufus: how could the whole damned world be built on something that didn't exist? And why didn't more people care? His mother laughed, gently, when he asked her to take him to the bank to set up his own account -- piggybanking, Rufus? she'd asked him, one of the clearest memories he has of her still.

That was before she died. By the time he attended her funeral, his piggy bank was a quiet collection of hurts turned into spite turned into dollar signs and numbers. His father and the law may have prevented him from touching any of the family's finances, but Rufus – young and defiant and stupid but also driven and intelligent and set alight by a fire that sometimes never catches for other people – drew on his credit cards and bought things like cars and false friends, things his father approved off and didn't pay attention to. The former he sold to the latter, and the latter he'd later sell to the dogs.

That was then. Now, the friends – acquaintances - which he keep close tell Rufus that he has anger management problems. They think (or Reno thinks) that it's marvellous and hilarious that Rufus can go from being a "cold hard smiling lying bitch" on any weekday to a "recalcitrant psycho" on the weekends, always impatient and too-thorough and breaking things. He still loathes golf; every time they make him play for a charity event Rufus ends up having to drive in one of the older cars. Rufus doesn't, in his opinion, have anger management problems. He thinks that, for the years of wasted youth and time spent in Chicago and hours spent wheedling and whirling through bureaucracy, that he manages his anger well enough.

(And Tseng brushes pebbled glass off the leather of the back seat, and laughs.)

-

Tseng doesn't play games.

He doesn't get laughed at.

But he does play, and well.

-

 _Mid October, 2008_

"...not a game?" Balthier asks. The hand that holds his slender cigar also cups his shot of whiskey. He looks as Tseng through the amber and grins. "What do you call this then?"

Tseng turns at Balthier's gesture and surveys the terrain that waved whiskey glass encompasses, this small booth of purple velvet and sofas, the laptop that sits on the table between them all despite the dancers not five feet away. Rufus still sits straight and forward with his knees apart, but Balthier has returned to his usual sprawl, ankle on knee, elbow on the back of the chair, head tilted wryly.

"I call this," Tseng says, with diffidence, "a minefield." The both of them probably know him well enough to recognise that it's impatience in his voice, but Tseng's certain that neither of them know him so well that they're able to acknowledge why.

Rufus leans forward, rests his elbows on the table and pushes aside his vodka and soda. He speaks flatly over the heavy beat of the music. "Put that shit out, Bunansa. You're too young to die."

In response Balthier tongues the cigar. "Old vices," he says, and grins. "Like old habits. They do die so very hard."

'I'll leave the two of you to this,' Tseng pronounces, dusting his knees off and standing.

Rufus sends him a look. 'Where are you going?'

Tseng glances once at Rufus' posture, and then again at Balthier's. 'For some fresh air. The testosterone here is suffocating.'

Tseng pushes his way out through onto the floor of human bodies; contrary to what anyone might think, he spends the few moments enveloped there with some enjoyment. He's in a suit amongst barely-dressed dancers, but it doesn't stop him from moving with them rather than through them. He can hear the bass line through the soles of his shoes. Some woman laughs and pulls him in for a quick round before he touches her, apologetic, on the hip, and heads for the exit.

He doesn't need to be around to facilitate Rufus and Balthier. It's only important that the two of them meet – Tseng trusts in some things simply being constant. Balthier's ego, and Rufus'.

Balthier's the one that finds him first, more likely than not because Rufus is too stubborn to be the first one away from a fight. Tseng's got his back against the wall just at the curb. 'Are the two of you done?'

'Hardly.' Rufus steals the answer, coming up abruptly next to Balthier.

Balthier hasn't said anything, mostly because he's preoccupied. The linguistic turn-tabling of the night drops away when he reaches up to flick at the cigarette in Tseng's hand. 'You smoke? I have been a bad influence.'

Rufus doesn't growl, Tseng gives him credit for that. Tseng stubs his single fag-end out on the brick wall behind him and throws it away – conscientiously – into a nearby bin. 'I did some things before I met either of you. Hard as that may be to believe.'

'I thought,' Rufus says, quietly, 'you quit.'

'I did,' Tseng agrees as he begins to walk towards the nearest subway. He doesn't usually take the lead, but the other two don't seem to want to move. 'Every once in a while the world convinces me that quitting was a bad idea.'

-

Precision is an art, of which Tseng has long neared mastery. No one is absolutely precise: no one should be. Tseng comes close.

His home is what Balthier calls "a wreck", but there is no part of it that is not functional, nor is there any aspect of it that does not integrate. His couch is too short for European legs. It fits Tseng's Asian frame fine. It does not suit Tseng to suit others. His table is plastic, cheap, and lasts longer than any glass-and-metal contraption off any of the catalogues that mysteriously end up scattered about his apartment after Balthier's visits. There is nothing in Tseng, or around them, that is composed of excess. His existence is pared, lean, deadly effective. It makes Balthier feel starved when he comes over. It makes Rufus hungry.

It takes Tseng half an hour on any morning to go from sleep to his door. He showers in cold water during the mucky summer, and in lukewarm heat in the winter. He rubs his hair down and allows it to dry while he takes breakfast; cereal and milk and hot water with spare tea. His eyes are always on words or numbers: his phone, his laptop, the Times a crumpled lot of monochrome in his monochrome world. It makes other people so uncomfortable, his life. He's in black and white again by the time he steps out of the door, leather shoes on gritty Manhattan pavement as he slides into the subway crowds. There, Tseng disappears. He cannot be told apart from the next man. It is exactly as he likes it.

Somewhere near the Exchange, Tseng re-emerges. The barista at his local Starbucks - usually a youngish woman with brown streaks in her hair and an objectively beautiful smile - is always, somehow, crushed when he hands her the precise change for his drink using his left hand. She looks at his ring like it's a brand, which it is, and then up into his eyes, which betray nothing. 'Yours is a double shot, right?' she asks him that particular morning.

'Yes,' Tseng says, a little more bemused than he was the last time he visited. He accepts the receipt from her and does not look back at her as he moves to pick up his cardboard cup.

He's just another man with a caffeine hit by the time he walks into the office. Rufus is there, the way he likes to be at the beginning of every morning now that there is nothing in the world to stop him being anywhere the hell he wants to be. Once upon a time they met in strange places: boardrooms, executive washrooms, the northeast junction of Bryant Park in the evenings. Now Rufus tends to warm Tseng's chair for him, in anticipation or in smug arrogance or both. God alone knows.

'Of all the consumer habits in the world,' Rufus nods at Tseng's coffee. 'Yours are the strangest, all things considered.'

'I could bring my own drink, yes,' Tseng agrees, because he has a fully functional machine in a crook of his kitchen, the use of which he saves for particularly bad days and ergo most of this last month.

'Why don't you?' Rufus asks, getting up and passing Tseng a folder with the day's agenda. They could do this by email. They both dislike email tremendously.

'Camouflage,' Tseng shrugs, accepting the manila as he takes a sip. 'It fits the uniform. Briefcase,' he nods to the slim folio he's set on the floor. 'Suit.' That one is self-explanatory. 'Starbucks.' He shakes the near-empty cup. 'I'm a common man.'

Rufus snorts, and snags the cup to throw away as he leaves Tseng be.

Tseng flips open the file. He has to try not to laugh. Rufus wants to go after Bunansa stock. Wants to own as much of it as he can afford, and Rufus can afford – enough.

Boys and their toys. Children are so easy to understand.

Tseng does not take off the ring when he picks up his phone. 'Your show-and-tell did not impress,' he says across the thousands of miles without preamble. 'If you're still running from your father, you may not need to run so quickly now.' Tseng glances at the figures. 'Unless you're planning on running from Rufus as well. And he doesn't like cowards.'


	3. Or, how Tseng teaches us to stop worrying and love the platinum credit card.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you have to brand everything you come to own?

Once upon a time, October happened in the 2008th year marked down in a calendar belonging to a religion that barely half of the city even believes in now.

(God? Yeah. If He'd been around, He'd have wept at the massacre the S&P took today. Standard and really-fucking-Poor!)

The ramifications have been many: one investment banker cut his losses but saved his pride by denouncing all of capitalism and retreating (still rich) to take up a monk's habit where the tabloids can't call him a coward. More than one investment banker has taken up another kind of habit altogether: Brown-Forman (owner of Jack Daniels and a number of other brand-name liquors) has seen its stock go up a few cents for reasons entirely non-financial.

Mostly, there's just been a lot of -

"Jump, you capitalist pig! The party's over!"

Balthier looks over the balustrade. The wind throws back his hair. He winces and leans to set his bare shoulders to the wall. "I hope that's not for one of yours."

Rufus moves to the rail, slowly for easing past Balthier's proximity. Against his bare chest, he can feel the heat rising off Balthier's skin. The city sprawls beneath him; the crowd mills, raucous and unpleasant. He can see red hair against the acres of official black. A fire truck would be ashamed of that dye job.

Rufus loves this city, has loved her from the moment he saw his whites against her dark shades; loves her even more for that contrast. The updraft is raw and hot. Balthier's fingertips are on the nape of his neck. Rufus doesn't move away. The next howled insult reveals a face.

"Reno."

"Shit. I know him, we met in Frankfurt. Stalked me around the city for a week, begging for a ride. Entertaining." Balthier holds both glass and cigarette in his left hand; he navigates the handful with skill to avoid tipping the glass as he sucks contemplatively. His free hand continues to stroke. His touch is – practiced. Rufus considers the word. Yes. Practiced. "Thought he was a prostitute until he whipped out his business card. Never struck me as the kind to jump."

"He's not." Rufus points down. "He's the one calling."

Balthier grins. "You choose your employees for their entertainment value." He shifts his grip to take a mouthful of whiskey. "Gah, the ice melted. Never water down a refined spirit." With a flick of his wrist he tosses the contents of his glass over the balcony, his cigarette butt to follow, and struts back inside. Rufus turns his head to watch Balthier walk; a one-man parade. Rufus wonders if he'll see the man jump if he lingers long enough.

"Jump," Reno bellows, "you rotten bastard in your three-piece suit, your wingtip shoes, your Rolex watch and your damned suspenders, you who threw good hard-working men with dirt under their fingernails out of work! Juuuuuuump!"

For a fraction of a second, Rufus thinks Reno's got the balls from somewhere to yell at him, but then, he's not wearing anything approximating a three-piece.

("Jump," Reno shouts, "you don't deserve a bailout, especially with what remains of the taxpayers' money! Jump, you bastard! You've looted and plundered the land of your birth without any regard for the consequences!")

Some people manage their stress in atypical ways. As opposed to the round of squash or a walk in the park or a night spent watching old movies, they go on extended business trips to work themselves out of blinding anger.

Rufus hasn't required that he approve anything Tseng does for years now, which is half the reason why he's in this kind of fucked up situation. Tseng's selfishly managing his stress somewhere in the Asia-Pacific region by earning back money that affluent bratlings throw away.

That's what Reno told Rufus regarding Tseng's absence when he came into work that morning. The wording may not have been precisely what Tseng intended it to be, but if Tseng'd wanted it to be precise, Rufus knows he would've given it to anyone but Reno to relay.

"He said a couple of other things, too, bossman, but I really can't be bothered to recall the super-long sentences that Tseng likes to use, so I'll help him summarise. I think the gist of it was more or less, 'fuck you, and fuck you both, and fuck you all'. He says he'll be back whenever."

Reno, Rufus thinks charitably, probably needs all the stress relief he can get with his voluble preaching to the converted, considering that he's taking half of Tseng's workload while the man's away. Rufus thinks this is almost poetic justice, just like how he thinks that Reno's simply projecting when he calls out, "Your life's not fucking worth living anymore! America's currency is as worthless as you are!" from far below.

"He's loud," Balthier notes. There's a clink of glass, ice, fluid. Rufus finds it hard to look at the man, standing there naked. Balthier looks too – bright for Rufus's pristine apartment. "Should I shut the balcony door? I am finding it rather amusing. Does he know you live here?"

"Yes. It's more likely than not that he's stirring for my sake."

"Be a shame if whoever it is actually jumps." Balthier presses a fresh drink into Rufus's hand. His fingers linger against Rufus's, cool and long. He doesn't step back; he steps – closer. Closer. "I haven't been this amused since, oh, about twenty minutes ago."

Over Balthier's shoulder, Rufus stares at the wall, as blank as that white plaster. He drinks to get the taste of Balthier out of his mouth, fruitlessly. As soon as Rufus swallows, Balthier's kissing him. Whiskey and cologne and smoke and Balthier all blur together. Balthier is significantly taller. Tseng is Rufus's height.

Rufus whispers against the invasion of Balthier's tongue. 'I'm not here for your amusement.'

("Jump!" Reno shouts, "you bastard, you called it business when it was really treason! You sold out our nation for profit!")

"Time for round two," Balthier says. It's almost a question. "I could go all night, especially with as sweet a serenade as that. Venice bedamned; this is true New York romance."

Balthier's well travelled. Rufus supposes it's a European thing; two hours and a new country. Forty five minutes for someone who, as Balthier does, owns and can pilot any assortment of private jets. What's strange is how completely even a traveller like Balthier carries London everywhere with him; British prejudice, British currency, British mentality. Especially considering how everyone says travel opens the mind. Rufus decides he likes that – yes, he's going to call it integrity. A man should always know where he is in the world, who he is, where he's come from.

"Physical proof," Rufus says, "is required of the former. The latter is arrogance."

"You don't trust me yet?"

"Yet?" Rufus asks. "Try ever."

("Jump," Reno shouts, "stinker who lied to the American worker, who bribed and corrupted the representatives of the people to send America's jobs to sweatshops in China, leaving in their wake minimum wage jobs while you stuffed your pockets at the expense of your fellow Americans.")

"Slanderous," Balthier murmurs, his eyes half lidded. He does the languorous look better than anyone else Rufus has seen. Balthier settles back, propped on his elbows and looking down the long length of his stomach to where Rufus kneels. His earrings exaggerate every slight motion he makes. Even the barest tilt of his hips sets the light to sparking along that metal. Tseng has his hair, pure joy to mess up, curling and draping over white linen like an indelible, invisible ink, but Tseng never looks like this. Rufus doesn't understand how someone can look dishevelled while completely naked. "I've never bribed an American. You're all far too cheap for my tastes."

Balthier spreads his knees. Rufus plants his hands on long thighs and slides. At least Balthier has this much sense of reciprocation; Rufus wasn't about to ask, nicely or otherwise, and certainly not after sucking Balthier off for the most provocative forty minutes of his life before the man deigned to come. He hadn't thought Balthier had any passing acquaintance with self-control. Rufus won't make that mistake again.

"Don't think," Balthier murmurs, "that I'll wash your sheets for you if you follow this through."

"I think,' Rufus says, voice edged, 'that you can reserve that pragmatism for someone else."

("Jump, you pretenders who think driving a hybrid and skipping Starbucks once a week will convince us that you're for real!")

Rufus dislikes almost everything about this situation. He dislikes Balthier's attitude, and dislikes Balthier's flippancy. He dislikes Balthier's tendency to proselytise. He dislikes Balthier, and has disliked Balthier since he was old enough to know how stunningly similar the Bunansa family was to any other family of old empire.

This should feel strange. It doesn't. Rufus knows the old adage of equivalent trade. Tseng's given up more than Rufus will ever come to know. Measure the man's sacrifice by opportunity cost – Tseng's commitment doesn't reflect itself in his position in life, but in the vague notion of what he could have been. Tseng, in this day and age and in his market, stands at the helm of a solvent behemoth able to change lives.

Tseng could have been more.

Tseng could very easily step away, and be more.

This, to Rufus – this negotiation, renegotiation – does not feel strange.

Balthier takes his fingers easily. Rufus looks up at Balthier's face for a moment and catches an expression he didn't think to see. He wonders if this is what Tseng sees in the man. He wonders if this is what Tseng sees in him. Rufus moves his fingers, testing. Balthier lets his head roll back, his mouth open to the ceiling. Each motion sparks a different sort of sound. Want translates into such an easily readable form via Balthier's flesh. Rufus is surprised at how such complexity renders into pure simplicity in his hand. Balthier is liquid with this, melting back and into and entirely across the bed, his Greek-Islands tan against white linen. His whole body looks like surrender. His hands curl up and near his face. His head tilts to one side. His fingers press against his forehead. His brow furrows.

Rufus twists his wrist. Balthier bites his lip.

("Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!")

"Your employees are bastards," Balthier husks, his eyes dark. He's sweating. His breath is too fast. Rufus didn't think he would, but he's enjoying this. "They have a valid role model."

"You should fit right in."

"You know what else can fit right in?"

"Enlighten me."

("Jump! Jump! Jump!")

"Let's leave enlightenment to the Chinaman," Balthier sighs, "wherever he is: just fuck me, will you?"

("Jump!)

Rufus does.

-

 _Earlier_

'I need more,' Rufus says one night during one of the lulls in the fighting. He walks with Tseng; it's something he's taken to doing after-hours recently, filling the space with talk he usually reserves for the hours after they share a bed. Tseng obliges him by directing them to a subway station three blocks farther than the one he usually rides home on. Side by side, they're more silent and balanced than they've been in weeks; Tseng hasn't changed, the problem being that Rufus hasn't either. The intrusion of a third requires rearrangement, and Rufus can't find enough reasons to move.

'More what?' Tseng asks, walking fast. Rufus keeps up the way all New Yorkers do. They dodge sideways past a careening bike messenger, and reunite back on the pavement.

'More than the excuse that you need an equal,' Rufus says. He's no longer bitter when he says it – jealousy arises from the allusion that you are being replaced. It took all of half a moment to relive old memories of the Bunansa family – Rufus knows why Tseng must've laughed, when it first came up. This isn't about replacement. Balthier couldn't replace Rufus if he tried.

Tseng reaches up and loosens his tie half an inch. 'It's not an excuse, Rufus,' he says. 'I work for you, in more ways than one. There are lines I observe because of that distinction.'

'You don't have to observe them,' Rufus tells him. He flicks at the ring on his own hand, unconsciously. He has, imperceptible to most, a tan line around his fourth finger. 'I thought we were both clear on this.'

'And I'd be a very different person if I spent my days insulting you the way I sometimes do Balthier,' Tseng points out.

'Which is what I don't understand,' Rufus admits. 'The man's a wreck, Tseng. Half a genius, but mostly a wreck. He's aimless, obscure, and likely to be suicidal.'

'It may be genetic,' Tseng acknowledges. 'His father, after all.'

'The great Bunansa tragedy. It's more like a comedy.' Rufus' steps take on a very precise kind of gait, tap tap tap on the pavement like he's agitated by the incompetence. 'Three sons, all of them more than slightly off kilter, and daughters who'd rather disappear from society than live in it. The family company is a huge farce and a financial lie, and it'll come crashing down now with the banks bleeding and the government socialising. There's a park here. Sit with me for a little while.'

'We're back to stealing time in public places now?' Tseng asks with a bit of a laugh in his voice. He doesn't begrudge Rufus this, either. It's comforting, actually, the old tradition of sitting on the withering wooden benches in the middle of darkness and the city lights. It's summer, now, with little rain.

Rufus sits, rubbing his forehead. 'What is it, Tseng? You haven't changed.'

'Mm,' Tseng nods. 'I haven't.' This is more for Rufus than for himself: if the Shinra heir needs to verbalise, Tseng is there to listen and correct. It's far healthier than Balthier's own immediate jumps to conclusions.

'Have I?' Rufus looks at him.

Tseng lets his hand, in old magic, alight on the back of Rufus' neck in answer.

Rufus exhales noisily. 'I don't understand your appetite for him.'

'Dreamers exhaust us,' Tseng says, obliquely.

'What?' Rufus asks, opaque.

It makes Tseng smile. 'You're still the king on the board, Rufus. I'm the pawn.'

'Bishop,' Rufus objects.

'Knight,' Tseng settles. 'Whatever you want to call me. I dislike getting pushed around, but I've got absolutely no desire to lead. I lack your single-mindedness.'

Rufus breaks out into a chuckle. 'Are you trying to tell me that you're screwing with Balthier because you want to multitask? Is running this company not challenging enough, or –' Rufus shakes his head wryly. They both know he's joking.

'What I am trying to say is that it has very little to do with you, and very little to do with Balthier. I like balance, Rufus. You give me an end, he gives me a means.' And if Tseng has to be any more blatant about where he wants Rufus to go with this, he may have to spell it out in print.

'What haven't I done or been?' Rufus asks the absolutely wrong question.

Tseng sighs. 'You can't rule over me the way you've methodically ruled over everything else in your life,' he says, as patient as he can manage. 'There aren't criteria that you can fulfil.'

Rufus' gaze is contemplative, lancing. 'Has that ever stopped me from trying?'

Tseng stands up. 'Rufus.'

Rufus stands with him. 'I'm not giving up on this,' he says as they resume their walk. 'You know I'm not.'

'Oh, I know,' Tseng agrees, looking ahead and not really seeing the pedestrian traffic or the road at all. 'You've never learned things the easy way, after all.'

-

They're antagonising Tseng, which is something they both should know better than to do.

Rufus keeps hounding Bunansa stock - it leaves Tseng watching the abbreviation BNS bounce up and down in the day like an indecisive float. Rufus plays a vicious game of bidding the price up before flooding the market. People have started shorting because they're too confused and too sane to believe that all this is is a cockfight between boys playing at being men; Rufus using his allowance money and Balthier using his audacity. Tseng's glad to hear the closing bell.

Balthier, for his part, keeps visiting. This chafes. The unspoken agreement has - had - many rules, not the least of which being one of distinct territoriality. The Atlantic is only just wide enough to keep Balthier's antics insulated, and that's on a good day. With the man in New York on what seems to be a bizarre and interminable holiday, the city's beginning to feel too small.

They're antagonising Tseng. No matter the kind of man they're both trying to be, they still act exactly as they were raised.

-

'You've reached me,' Tseng answers his phone. He's still too hard to find in his home ground - Balthier's best chance of locating him is to stakeout Tseng's apartment, but the neighbourhood's too grubby for his tastes and Tseng, unlike some, has work to do that keeps him all hours. They talk like they're still miles apart. 'What do you want?'

'You're a very irritating man,' Balthier tells him.

'This call is going to be nothing but you trying to get to me,' Tseng says, flatly. 'I have a living to earn. You have to do better than this.'

'Are we ever going to talk about this in a civilised way?' Balthier asks.

'You're the one who invaded my privacy.'

'Privacy?' Balthier snorts. 'Privacy's one thing - disclosure's another matter altogether. You owe me more than -'

'I suggest you treat the next few minutes very carefully,' Tseng says, softly. 'I don't owe you anything. I could count the number of times you've trawled the streets looking for pretty faces whenever I couldn't keep you occupied.'

'Someone once told me he valued honesty.'

'Mm,' Tseng nods, even though Balthier can't see him. 'So I kept my affair discreet while you flashed yours in my face. In what? An attempt at showing me how lucky I was and am to have you?' Most men get angry. Tseng gets amused. It's terrible to be subject to. 'Who is, Balthier, the better man here?' There's a sound of shifting cloth, and brief static. 'Call me back tonight at about ten if you require any further comforting. Business needs tending. Rufus, give me those files -'

Dialtone.

-

At ten o three, Rufus' fingernails are cutting blunt condensation streaks down the windows of his glass-tower-office. They don't mix business and pleasure, not usually, but Tseng's close to effervescent when he's vexed, and Rufus likes to push their line farther and farther and farther whenever he can. They're both still mostly dressed, and it's not so much a fuck as a rut - hips and mouths and tongue and noise and the whole damned world stretched out bare and beautiful beyond them. Rufus' teeth on Tseng's neck because his streak of possessiveness has taken a sudden deeper shade.

Tseng's phone rings. Rufus almost snarls, but Tseng slams him backwards and shoots him a warning glance before he reaches into his pocket to take out his mobile. He nudges it open with his chin, dark eyes on icy blue, and says hello, his voice dripping with all the hoarseness it never has.

-

Balthier listens. His laptop is in front of him, shining with red lines of impossibility. Balthier listens. He hates himself, but that's nothing unusual. He listens. Business needs tending, indeed. He hits a key and pulls up another screen. He listens.

Balthier realises, somewhat fucking belatedly, that this war started without him.

-

Tseng understands the attractiveness in listening to Rufus Shinra's voice go from its collected pride to chopped up incoherency. He doesn't understand as clearly how the parallels might run for Balthier, but he knows enough to extrapolate. The two of them are similar. Similar enough to hate each other as furiously as they do; one chasing the other like kings on a chessboard unable to come face to face.

'The problem,' Tseng starts talking, to both Rufus and Balthier's surprise, 'with living - in excess is that - you don't know how to buckle down.'

He pushes Rufus' neck back when the man tries to rear up. The way he says the word buckle highlights an accent in his tonality he usually never lets surface.

'Stop talking to him,' Rufus grinds out. He's trapped in between the hard glaze of the table and a warmth he doesn't know whether to buck into or pull away from. 'Fuck, Tseng.'

'I'm speaking to you both,' Tseng says, fingers fisting in neat golden strands. 'Are you listening, Balthier?'

('I'm listening,' Balthier replies. Very shortly, for Balthier.)

'This doesn't have to be a war,' Tseng growls. His voice is just deep enough to colour Balthier's imagination: the red lines burn into the back of Balthier's eyelids. The thudding noises are rhythmic and evenly spaced. It's so typical of Tseng. 'You could both let it go. Accept that I'm not going to be monopolised. Accept that I don't share any more than I indulge.'

'And they call me crazy,' Rufus gasps, fingers knotting and sliding and finding no purchase. 'The rest of the world just hasn't met you -- fuck,' his voice breaks out in a moan. 'Fuck.'

'There're other options,' Tseng continues. He doesn't have to pin Rufus anymore - Rufus is pinning himself. There are intangible forces that Tseng doesn't even need to appeal to. Rufus' eyes are open, shot and glued to the open phone, as if he can see Balthier there. Tseng wonders how much of a mirror they both really are to each other. It could be, theoretically, a terrifying thing to be unable to distinguish yourself from someone you're afraid to even be like. 'If the both of you are being persistent, it's not because I'm valuable. I'm highly replaceable.' Tseng lets Rufus stay where he is, transfixed. He reaches out and pulls the phone to his ear.

'The ends you both go to just to realise a life that has nothing to do with old money or heritage,' Tseng breathes, hard, into the receiver. He leans down on Rufus, brings the edge of his teeth to Rufus' upper lip. Rufus' mouth is open on a wordless groan. 'What am I? An accessory so that you can learn what it's like to not rule the little worlds you've built?'

Rufus sounds startlingly like Balthier when he makes the noises he does. Tseng reaches down with his free hand, shoves his fingers in when he knows Rufus is already feeling too stretched --

Rufus feels the world drop away from him, crazily wheeling and tumbling and so far away from numbers on boards and too much for even him to bear, so little fucking purchase that he's got nothing to cling onto, sliding just wholesale into his own body and it's a foreign place full of foreign wants. No last names, no inheritances, bare like the inside of Tseng's apartment, Tseng's head, Tseng's heart.

Tseng presses the cradle of his phone up against Rufus' ear, and Rufus realises he can't tell who it is, precisely, who's making the undignified keening, desperate sounds.

-

Always keep a spare clean handkerchief, another fine gentlemanly tradition his father taught him before. Just, before. Balthier mops himself up. He drops the monographed cotton onto the carpet.

Balthier likes this hotel. He almost always stays here. It's very Art Nouveau, constructed in that time not so long ago in America's history when Chicago and New York fought over the skies. He's always had a fondness for naturalistic art, and finds it amusing the corruption of that original movement that thought to turn industrially produced skyscrapers into handcrafted shafts of individualist ego. The maid has seen him leave far worse on the carpet; he's more worried about what he's done to his pants, handkerchief rescue strategy aside. The drycleaners here are murderous little thugs, and thieves besides. Slack immigration policies have a lot to answer for.

Balthier sets his phone next to the laptop. He still remembers needing cables for this, information dependent on extremities. Not now. The ties that bind are all invisible. He ignores the exchange for the moment and all the warning bells ringing in the back of his mind. The last time he felt like this -- yes, possibly back when he was sixteen. He supposes that says something about maturity, and how much of it he's earned.

Balthier opens the recording of the conversation and hits play.

He rocks back in his chair and smiles at the elaborately pointless cornices. Rufus Shinra's moans should be set to music. Something classical. Something portentous. Balthier does not think about the plummeting red line.

Recording uploaded, Balthier picks up the phone and makes a call. Americans make the best use of paparazzi for publicity, but the British are not so far behind. He doesn't want to go there.

"A message for Rufus Shinra," Balthier tells the voice on the other end. "From Balthier Bunansa after our three-way teleconference concluded at ten forty pm today. I'm wondering, with this current market, what Rufus values his pride at."

-

 _Before_

Balthier - doesn't really get why, but on the rare occasion Tseng thinks actually sleeping together is permissible, Tseng sleeps with his nose pushed right to the back of Balthier's neck. His breath tickles, but Balthier gets used to the novelty. He doesn't sleep much anyway, his brain ticks too fast and too hungrily for that. It's not a caffeine buzz when his last espresso was at 2pm. Balthier just doesn't sleep; he thinks in circles and lines and explosive bursts, laterally and linear, logically and illogically; he can't tolerate being still, even when he is. Tseng always sleeps like he hasn't slept in years.

Tseng doesn't get why he does it either, but Balthier smells good. The man drinks too much coffee and smokes too much, he should smell like shit. Of everyone Tseng knows, only Reno is as caffeinated and as cancer-bound as Balthier, and Reno always stinks like he crawled out of a hobo's hotel. Balthier moisturises, Tseng decides, and far too often for him to smell that good all the time.

In Tokyo Tseng caves and lets Balthier stay the night. The city swallows him. Tseng doesn't come here often, but when he does Tokyo disturbs him enough with false familiarity; too Western, too Eastern, and Tseng finds himself wanting a familiar face when he wakes up, a face that isn't his own. Tseng remembers why he so rarely lets Balthier sleep in his bed, when, for the ten seconds after waking before Tseng remembers himself, Tseng murmurs: "You smell good."

"...not like sour milk?" Balthier asks, grinning. He turns and props himself up on one arm. He looks like he hasn't slept all night. "You don't smell like rice either, just in case you were wondering."

"I'm American, Balthier. No matter what I look like. Rice is one of a multitude of supplies available for consumption in an American's world of excess."

Balthier shrugs. "Well, I'm lactose intolerant. Never touch milk. I suppose there could be something intelligent said about that, we are what we eat, absence versus excess. If a man were prone to pontificate, that is."

When Balthier rolls on top of him, Tseng deigns not to open his mouth. He presses his face against the light fuzz of Balthier's chest and breathes him. Balthier's hand coils through his hair and finds the knots. Tseng winces. Tseng winces again when Balthier's free hand seeks lower.

"...so I shouldn't take you out for breakfast sushi then?"

Tseng grunts and tilts his hips. "That's Japanese, you ignorant swine-eater. I'm from China."

"I thought you said you were American."

Mornings are a terrible time. They're both too hard for anything but force. Tseng pants when he speaks. "Where a man is from has nothing to do with who he is."

"Oh," Balthier purrs, "this doesn't happen often, so allow me to gloat: You are so sadly mistaken, my little--"

"If you say 'Chinaman' I'm biting your cock off."

"You and your promises." Balthier chides, happily. His palm is sticky when he cups Tseng's chin. "Put your mouth where your money is, first."

Tseng does. It might be 6am after a hard night and a harder day, but Balthier always finds some way to come out of a shitstorm smelling like roses.

-

 _Mid October, 2008_

'Oh hey,' Tseng's barista at Starbucks says with a start the one morning that Tseng goes in looking something other than totally put together. 'I hope you don't think I'm some sort of crazy stalker or anything, but you're in here pretty often, and don't you usually have a ring on...?' She motions at his hand with badly disguised hope.

'Yes,' Tseng says. 'It's in for refitting. It was getting a little tight.'

-

There're two USBs on the table between them, in between the candles and glassware, situated in the neutral territory of crisp white linen. By the time Balthier arrived Rufus was already here, his USB already positioned. Balthier lay his own down next to it. The contents could have been anything. The digital world makes this display theatrical and utterly pointless, but Balthier knows how men like their props.

Balthier contemplates Rufus' USB as he allows himself to be tucked in under the table and bedecked with napkin. It can't be about his money. Half the world knows about the illegality of his father's flawed process, but no one can prove it. He doesn't think Rufus is going to get him on that when half of British Intelligence couldn't.

"A drink before dinner, gentlemen?"

"Whiskey for my associate," Rufus says, before Balthier can speak.

"We have on offer the Macallan Elegancia, single malt scotch whiskey exclusively matured in Spain—"

"Matured only twelve years?" Rufus lilts, and smiles broadly. Neither of them look at the plastic packages of impending ruination that sit, side by side. Balthier clenches his fist beneath the table. Oh. "That sort of age should suit your tastes, Bunansa?"

Balthier grins. He can't not. "Double shot, if you please." He quirks an eyebrow. "If there's two of them it takes the count up to twenty four years."

"If that's how you do your math, small wonder you're in the state you're in." Rufus waves away the waiter.

Balthier pauses for effect as well as relative privacy. "New York?"

Rufus snorts. "Virtual bankruptcy."

"Virtual. Shall I run through the definitions for you? No, don't let me patronise your intelligence or your education system, I'd hate to do that."

"You really are a bastard, Bunansa."

Bastard's a touchy word to use around men of pedigree. Balthier considers it a compliment.

"No," Balthier says, "I'm not. That's half the problem right there."

"…only half?"

"Virtual," Balthier continues. "None of this exists, what we're doing. Even the whole world's mad level of ruin impendent: it's not real. What is this world but a fugue state between existences, of nomad hunters and whatever we'll be in the future. Do you know how long we've been 'civilised' for against the whole history of human evolution? You and I are meaningless, ultimately, and the only difference between us is that I know how little we matter. You still think you can change the world. I know that what we do here means nothing beyond how much enjoyment we can get out of it."

Rufus taps his fingers on the table. 'I apologise. My father never sent me on a five year course to learn Latin or philosophy.' Look at me, is the hissed undertone. American and stupid. Gregariousness doesn't impress me much.

"You can't take anything away from me to make me hurt. I don't care about any of it. Have it all. All of it: my father's spoils. My true assets might not be nearly so significant, but they are beyond your reach. All this," Balthier grins, "was just for play."

Rufus nods at the USB. With his right hand, he scratches his chin. " Though the last time I checked, sixteen was underage." State laws being applicable; Rufus could suggest, if he'd been a friend to Balthier, that he indulge himself in any one of a number of countries for which sixteen is perfectly acceptable. But it's not, here in New York. Balthier knows that.

"I'll very politely not ask what happened that you had to check that particular point." Balthier sets his palms flat on the table. They're sweating, not that he can admit that. "You think trading my liberty for your pride is an equal deal?"

"Your freedom is the only thing you value."

Balthier shrugs. Callowness is easily feigned, much easier than caring. He makes quite an act of fishing in his inner pocket. "Your pride is the only thing you value."

The ring sings when he flicks it into Rufus's glass of water.

Rufus's features shift. Not totally – but it's easily seen by someone who wears as many mask as a Bunansa scion has to. Balthier's startled. He didn't think it would be this easy. _'That's not true. '_

Tseng said, men need equals. Rufus has it on good advice that men also need more than that. They need foundation if they're to rise to anything. Bunansa pisses him off because, it seems, he wants to go nowhere, and has no respect for anyone who does.

The ring sits in the glass like a stolen promise.

"And that," Balthier says, "is exactly what I wanted to hear."

-

 _Earlier_

'Rufus is going to destroy you,' Tseng announces to Balthier when he gets into his apartment after a day full of fielding phone calls and covert text-messages. He's tired of being the grounds for a stupid case of guerrilla warfare, Balthier supposes.

'Does anyone ever surprise you?' Balthier asks from his place on Tseng's couch. He's not here invited, and Tseng does not give keys out to anyone.

'Rarely,' Tseng says, shrugging out of his jacket and placing his briefcase down. 'You were eying the lock the last time you were over. This is the sort of card you'll pull now that the two of you are determined not to let each other realise that you're both still seeing me.'

'You're wasted on banking,' Balthier sighs. 'And you need better security.'

'No, I don't.' Tseng gestures at his apartment. 'What is there here to steal? What I need is for my associates to develop a sense of courtesy.' He jerks his tie off in short, sharp motions. It's more than Tseng lets Rufus see.

Balthier sprawls. Tseng's a thing to observe when he's in motion: for a man that's so often so still, he moves with electricity and alacrity. 'Mm. You were saying about Shinra?'

'I've tried speaking with him,' Tseng says as he strips out of his dress shirt and slides into a simple cotton top. He looks exactly the same either way. 'He's deaf. I'm hoping that you don't share that particular disability. There'll be carnage if the two of you both decide to fight.'

'I like fighting,' Balthier murmurs. 'People make such excellent noises when they go down.' Tseng doesn't respond; he walks over to the couch instead and waves something in front of Balthier's nose. Balthier raises an eyebrow. 'Still playing?'

'Only momentarily. I'm giving you a trump card, Bunansa.' Tseng flips the small band of metal into Balthier's face. He catches it, staring. 'If you decide to use it to fuck up,' Tseng says, 'I won't be here to mop up the mess. Keep it properly. Now get out of my apartment.'

Balthier knows when to beat a retreat. He gets up, stopping only to grab Tseng by the shoulder to pull him in for one brief, hard kiss that devours everything, thought, distance, breath. It feels like a last kiss. Balthier hardly ever kisses. He thinks he's going to change that, starting now.

'You're so appealing when you're angry."

The look Tseng shoots him would've chilled a lesser man. Balthier slips the ring into his jacket pocket and pats it before he sails out of the door.

-

 _Mid October, 2008_

'Leave,' Rufus says to Balthier. He's angry. Stupid things happen when he's angry; windshields get broken, lovers get picked up that never get left behind, an endless war gets waged against close family members, and so on. "Don't come back." It's words like that that remind the world exactly how young Rufus is despite the size of his holdings. It's words like that that people are afraid of, because Rufus has an equally child-like ability to follow up on very, very base and petty promises.

"It's a free world," Balthier says, idly. His damned long fingers are never still. He dips the index into his whiskey and trails amber about the rim of the glass. "For the time being, anyway. You can't keep me out of the US."

"Never come back to—"

"Go on," Balthier says. "Say his name, Shinra. Say it, and make this real instead of virtual."

"Never call Tseng again," Rufus continues, temperate. His imperatives are stated. "Never contact him. Never ring him. Never email him. Never fuck him."

"What can you possibly give me that would be worth that?" Balthier taps the USBs that sit between them. "I've been in prison twice before, did you get your spooks to dig up that sordid pile too? It wouldn't be here, my blood guarantees me that. It'd be back in the UK. My brothers are both in over there; it might be a bit of a feral affair but no worse than the shithole of an apartment you keep Tseng in. You can't threaten my liberty. I paid my dues for that privilege when I watched my father die."

Rufus says, "I will drag your name through every colour of shit this world knows--"

Balthier laughs. "The golden boy," he says, still smirking. "You care too much to even envisage a world that doesn't. Listen to you sing. Shinra, you have lived a life of privilege. I have a lived a life of wealth, but trust me when I say: I have been dragged through every colour of shit this world knows. Hah, disgracing my name. You sound like the Asian's rubbed off on you a time too many."

Rufus watches from some great distance as his own hand picks up the glass of water, ring included, and throws both glass and water directly into Balthier's face. Balthier can't avoid the drenching. He catches the glass, wide-eyed, quick-fingered, and dripping.

Somewhere, a ring falls, muffled by the carpet.

"I'm fine with disgrace," Balthier says, wiping his eyes with his knuckles. His lashes are starred with wet. "I'm fine with _facefuls_ of disgrace. I'm _used_ to facefuls of disgrace. Fuck, Shinra, if I'm going down it's with the pleasure of knowing my entire family name is going down with me. Self-destruction is only fun when half the world burns at the same time. Such is the lesson my esteemed and certifiably insane father taught me."

"Your stocks are hollow," Rufus says. "Your companies are empty. And I _bought you out_ , you bastard. You gutted everything."

"Empty sheds in Russia," Balthier says agreeably, grinning, smirking, the bastard. "Mined-out mines in Tanzania and Bulgaria. Falsely profitable companies with high point values achieved via massive redundancies these past few months. It's been a fun game, Shinra, but you forget where we differ."

'You don't care,' Rufus provides the line, clicking his jaw shut to watch the little play Balthier's put up for himself go on.

"I don't care," Balthier says, "about what the hell happens to the world. You insist on wanting to save it. From what? Itself? Is that what you think you're doing with Tseng? The man fucking likes his rags. A badge of honour. He wears his forty dollar shirts proudly," Balthier smirks, "and all the time."

'I don't do anything with or to Tseng,' This is the one thing Bunansa still doesn't get, and it's beginning to grate on Rufus' nerves.

"You Americans," Balthier says, "so intent on saving the world and every poverty-struck ethnic child you happen across." He leans across the table. His eyes sparkle. "Is that what you see in Tseng, Rufus Shinra? An intimate version of a World Vision charity project?"

Rufus doesn't bother with implements this time. He doesn't have Tseng's idea of honour, but he has something close. The table gets in his fucking way, so he kicks it over and goes directly for Balthier's throat.

-

"Honestly," Balthier rasps, around a mouthful of udon, "I'm extremely flattered."

Brawling has never been appropriate in a restaurant, however a man usually tips. Balthier was the one that insisted on still eating after they were evicted. ("You asked me out for dinner, you're bloody well buying me dinner.") The noodle shop was conveniently close; Balthier ran off half a mouthful of almost-correct Japanese and, buoyed by the giggles and glances of the girls behind the counter, even got them bags of ice for the bruises.

Rufus doesn't bother to look at him. His cheekbone hurts, for starters, and looking would require shifting the blissful ice. He knows Balthier's expression, secondly. The man seems to exist with amused or cynical as the limits of his range, however he twists his lips. Rufus is fairly sure, somewhere in the thick of the brawl, he saw cameras flash. Tseng's going to find out about this in the worst possible way.

"How does that figure?"

"A worthy opponent." There's a surprising hurt behind Balthier's flashy smile. "I don't think anyone's ever taken me so seriously before." He lifts his bowl to slurp the dashi directly from the plastic. "You fight like a pansy, incidentally. All that working out, and you can't even swing like a man."

"I take everything seriously."

"Yes," Balthier says, "of course you do. It's why he respects you."

Rufus hears: respect. He wants to think: love. He doesn't think love, because love is a categorisation made real by Hallmark cards and a slew of old superstition that he's not inclined to believe in.

"I, on the other hand, merely I amuse him," Balthier continues. "The cut-and-run version of your stand-and-fight. Sometimes I regret that I didn't meet him when I was younger, when it would have mattered. Before he met you."

'There are things that aren't worth explaining to you,' Rufus says. 'But it's enough to say that it's likely he takes it far more seriously than amusement, and that you're belittling him when you belittle yourself.'

"Your mysticism: it is deep. _Hai, sensei._ "

'Tseng is fighting to keep you,' Rufus says, flatly. Games are worth playing only when they need to be played, and Rufus is through with having his personal life interfered with by matters made suddenly public. 'He does everything well. He chooses well, when he chooses who to fuck.'

"I'm a fast talker. Even men as flawless as Tseng can fall sometimes."

'No,' Rufus says, because it's true. Then something turns in his head; a cog pre-oiled and suddenly obvious in its turning. 'How long have your companies and stocks been faltering?'

He's a Bunansa.

 _Yes, Tseng,_ Rufus thinks, viciously. _And I'm a Shinra._

"Who knows?" Balthier contemplates the empty depths of his bowl and looks somewhat hopefully at Rufus's. "Years. My father – ah, he was losing it at the end. Said God wanted him to wipe the earth clean of those who would commandeer our fates. He should've gone to live with the extremists, they could have chewed on their beards together and mulled over imaginary weapons of mass destruction. When he decided he could fly without testing his hypothesis quite thoroughly enough, I was left to fight a rear-guard all the way. I managed to salvage enough, managed to fool enough people, managed to not fall on my face. About six months ago I knew, and started to quietly let everything fold. Our little game, believe it or not, managed to get me more money than I had planned. I wasn't made for this. Aeronautics, engineering, communications. Oh, and Latin." He stretches. "What chance did I ever have? You mind if I have your noodle, if you're not eating it?"

'I do mind,' Rufus says again, with less bite and more thought. 'BNS doesn't exist anymore. I can't threaten you. You can't threaten me. I don't even know why you tried."

"Tseng will lose interest," Balthier says, wistfully eying the withheld noodles. "Tseng's worth a bit of a last bang, no? If I were you I wouldn't be worried. This has been fun, but, ah. Competency is the only thing that's ever interested the man. I think I'll go sailing for a while. Maybe photograph some whales. They're going extinct, you know. A rare breed."

'Years, Bunansa,' Rufus highlights, skipping over the man's verbal mess. 'You managed to keep everything afloat without any formal training.'

"Mm," Balthier says. He picks the last bits of seaweed out of the bowl and even eats them. "I'm bloody exhausted, I tell you that. I was so looking forward to the beginning of the end. Whales. Waves. Not a lot of anything else. I'll go quite happily mad in my solitude and miss out on the destruction of the world as we know it."

'Tseng said there were options,' Rufus does not hesitate, mostly because now he sees what a fool he's been for waiting. He doesn't know if Tseng had this planned or had this as a contingency, but he does not spit in the value of valuable assets, and at the end of the day everyone in Shinra knows that well. The private parts of Rufus' life will always bow before empire. The irony doesn't escape him; never has and never will. Rufus isn't the sort to breathe deeply before a jump. 'How do you feel about the concept of working for a salary?'

Balthier starts to laugh.

-

"I'd need to be a lot drunker than I am before I agree to a proposal like that," Balthier says, amused. "The package is not quite as well endowed as I'd hoped."

They're in some dark bar with a Cuban behind the counter. Whatever they're drinking, it's strong enough to strip enamel. Rufus orders another round. He makes sure Balthier's is a triple, and that his own single shot has a lot of ice. "There may be certain benefits."

"Sucking the boss's dick is not an acceptable part of a salary package."

"I never said anything about sucking my cock."

"I never said I wouldn't, mind." Balthier crunches his ice, contemplative. "Just that it's not a part of salary. Sucking my cock, on the other hand—you can write this one down if you like –"

Rufus always carries a notebook. Black ink on white paper appeals to him, for some reason, especially in cursive. He makes a note. "Understood."

The morning after, when Rufus wakes up with a head a lot worse than he expected to have and he reads the – mutually co-signed? – beginnings of Balthier's conditions of employment, he decides Balthier must have been switching their drinks.

-

Every time Tseng sees Balthier, in Frankfurt, in London, chance encounters at various exchanges, he notes one thing: Balthier is always surrounded by people. The supermodel, feeding off him for depth in a life made purposely two-dimensional so it can fit into a picture frame. The German twins, riding his high out of a country dragged down by the need to overcome. The errant and frequent royalty Tseng's seen Balthier photographed with in a wide assortment of tabloids; he is a safe sort of excitement in a life too well planned for true freedom.

It's understandable. The man oozes charisma and promises performance with his smile. He's entertaining. He endeavours to be so. There's competence there, somewhere, under all of that costuming. Balthier never sleeps alone, but always wakes alone. Balthier is nervous energy flying in a hundred directions at once. If Balthier ever applied himself, Tseng remembers thinking, wistfully; if he ever focused—

Rufus always stands alone, by choice. He hires and fires his staff based on their performance, not how well they flatter his ego. Reno, for the risks he's always willing to take and the falls he never shrinks from. Rude, for all the risks he's never willing to take. Elena, for eyes that always sees things as an outsider. It's an odd sort that makes it to Rufus' inner office. Tseng doesn't ask; he analyses. He's been taught not to look gift-horses in the mouth.

Balthier's breath is shallow, broken. He sleeps so poorly, stretched out all over the place. Rufus curls in the space Balthier leaves to him, and looks three times as comfortable as Balthier does. His thigh is atop Balthier's. Light gold and dark gold. The air is heavy with sex. Tseng aches, but not in any way the other two are familiar with.

He could never see two men less alike and more alike if he had set himself to hunt. They are perfect inversions, reflections that fill in each other's flaws. It is Tseng's lot, through a life that is a monochrome filter, to see the black and white of the matter. It is why he has never made a good leader. Better put: he needs a reason.

He supposes this is why he wants them both.

Rufus is integrity, and all the commitment that entails. Balthier is freedom, all the lack of commitment that involves. This isn't going to work. Their natures won't allow for it. But they are going to try.

Tseng knows he's not a good leader. But he is very good at understanding where people want to go, where they should go even if they don't want to, and making them go there.

Balthier stirs. He has always been too sensitive to the feel of eyes on him; sleep has deprived him of too many last glances and silent farewells. Rufus doesn't; he sleeps because he knows that whoever comes and goes from his bed will, eventually, return.

Tseng retreats silently, and lets himself out of Rufus's apartment.

-

By the time Rufus gets into work, it's nearly ten. Tseng nearly doesn't recognise Balthier in his wake. The suit – sort of – suits him. Makes him into just another man, at least until he smiles.

"Holy fucktards on a popstick," Reno says, his voice hoarse from whatever he was up to the night before. "Is that—"

"So where's my desk?" Balthier asks. "Apparently your—" he shudders conspicuously, " _our_ boss wants us to run about saving the world through whatever means necessary. The 'whatever means' apparently being my speciality, and the 'necessary' being, of course, his prerogative."

"Shut your mouth, Reno," Tseng says calmly. "You'll catch something."

"Not off me," Balthier protests, and Rufus scowls as he pushes the man towards his empty desk, primed for christening. 'This is it?' he asks, with some affront.

Rufus tosses a keycard down onto Balthier's table. 'Apparently someone made arrangements while he was away. Don't trash it.'

'What is it?' Balthier asks, flipping the card between his fingers.

Tseng answers en route to Rufus' office like he owns it, as opposed to the other way around. 'A development laboratory. Garage. Playground. Call it what you want, it's yours. It cost Shinra what it took to buy your father's company over. Do something useful with it other than making it your occasional fuckpad.' He pauses at Rufus' door. 'A word, Rufus.' It's not a question, nor is it a command.

The look Rufus sends Balthier could be smug, or it could be one of mutual understanding, or, considering the pair of them, a look of smug mutual understanding. Rufus goes and shuts the soundproofed door behind them both. He looks up at Tseng.

'Did you enjoy your vacation for reasons other than appropriating all that equipment?' Rufus reaches into his pocket. 'I have this.' The ring is warm in his hand, from where it's been sitting in his breast pocket for the last forever.

'About that,' Tseng says, propping his hands on Rufus' desk to brace himself. He has a ring on. Already. Rufus looks like the world's dropped out from under him. Again.

'What?' he manages, before Tseng cuts him off.

'That one's not even in my size. I don't have fingers that large, and I believe I told Balthier to keep it better than that.'

Rufus looks down at the object in his palm. Then, wordlessly, he slips it into his pocket and strides up in front of Tseng to grab him by the tie with one imperceptibly shaking hand. 'I'm not sure,' he says, lips against Tseng's lips, 'whether to kiss you or to kill you.'

Tseng's mouth curves upwards, right against the edge of Rufus' teeth. 'If you want to think about it,' he murmurs. 'This will, posthumously, probably piss off your father as well.'

'Do you have to brand everything you come to own?' Rufus asks, without bite.

Tseng, as a child, had few toys. The gutter provided. The gutter always provided. He made domino pieces out of collected trash - matchboxes, hammered out bottlecaps, whatever was at hand, whatever he could turn to his use.

He enjoyed, in a quiet way, the massive effect one simple push could have on so many other things.

'Sometimes,' Tseng shrugs, eyes bright. 'But only the things that are really worth owning.'

-

It comes back to him via office memo.

Balthier recognises Rufus's angular scrawl of his own name, opens the envelope and blinks.

After a moment Balthier puts the ring on. He wears a lot of them already. One more can't really make a difference, he thinks.


End file.
